BooksBarbecue
Back Deception Cove
Chapters (78)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Thirty-Nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-One
  48. Forty-Two
  49. Forty-Three
  50. Forty-Four
  51. Forty-Five
  52. Forty-Six
  53. Forty-Seven
  54. Forty-Eight
  55. Forty-Nine
  56. Fifty
  57. Fifty-One
  58. Fifty-Two
  59. Fifty-Three
  60. Fifty-Four
  61. Fifty-Five
  62. Fifty-Six
  63. Fifty-Seven
  64. Fifty-Eight
  65. Fifty-Nine
  66. Sixty
  67. Sixty-One
  68. Sixty-Two
  69. Sixty-Three
  70. Sixty-Four
  71. Sixty-Five
  72. Sixty-Six
  73. Sixty-Seven
  74. Sixty-Eight
  75. Acknowledgments
  76. Discover More
  77. About the Author
  78. Also by Owen Laukkanen

But Jess hadn’t had time for triage. Bryce Whitmer wasn’t about to concede defeat—and sure enough, he’d come around the front of the farmhouse as the truck sped past. She hadn’t seen him, but she’d sure heard his gun going off.

He hadn’t hit the truck, though, and now Jess pushed the gas pedal down as far as she dared, taking the twists and turns like a racer, the forest looming out of the dark at the edge of her headlights, the curves coming almost too fast to register.

She was driving on instinct. She’d been working on instinct since she blew that gate open.

Burke sat wedged against the passenger door, gripping the oh-shit bar above his head with one hand and the dog with the other. Lucy leaned into him, whimpering a little bit, twisting her thick neck around to lick his face whenever Jess hit a straightaway, like Burke could somehow stop this ride.

The truck raced past Shipwreck Point, the ocean on the passenger side, right up against the road now. Every quarter mile there was a pullout with a picnic table, and every half mile a flimsy cross dug in along the shoulder, memorial to a drunk driver or a victim thereof. The ocean was a black nothing outside Burke’s window; Jess couldn’t even see the shore to tell whether the tide was up or down.

The highway was empty. No headlights oncoming, none in the rearview. Jess kept on the gas regardless, knew that by the time she saw Whitmer or the deputies coming up from behind, it’d be too late.

Burke said something beside her a couple of times, but Jess didn’t hardly hear him. She was somewhere else, just driving, and he wasn’t there with her. After a while he shut up and just held on for dear life and let her get them where she was getting to.

Adrenaline wouldn’t last forever, though, and Jess could already feel the comedown. Could feel instinct start to slip away, letting her conscious mind back into the game, and that wasn’t good news for anyone.

She didn’t know where she was going. There wasn’t much west of here, not on this highway or anywhere else; give it ten miles and they’d reach Neah Bay and the Makah reservation, where the highway ended. Beyond that was the lighthouse at Cape Flattery, and that was the end of America, geographically speaking. There was only one road out of Neah Bay too, unless you wanted to brave the logging roads south along the coast, and that was a fool’s errand this time of year.

She’d trapped them.